


An Urgent Message From Your Father on the Happy Jack Frequency

by sahem62896



Category: The Shining (1980), The Shining - Stephen King
Genre: Alcoholics Anonymous, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, COVID19, Zoom Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29885406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahem62896/pseuds/sahem62896
Summary: Let's bring Jack Torrance into the 2020s and see what happens when we introduce some new technology to a timeless classic of modern horror.  This is my reimagining of Chapter 26 - "Dreamland" in the book in which he destroys the radio connecting them to the outside world.  In some places, I've actually kept the text of the book exactly as it is.  If you're a fan of Kubrick's movie, this would probably be the point where Wendy wakes Jack up from his nightmare about chopping his family up and Danny wanders in after making the acquaintance of Room 237's permanent guest.I own the rights to nothing; this is just for fun.  Please don't sue me for copyright infringement.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	An Urgent Message From Your Father on the Happy Jack Frequency

“ _But the nightmare was not over…_ ” — Stevie Nicks  
  


  
“Would our visitor from Colorado like to share?”

Jack looked at the screen of his laptop where nineteen other faces were looking back at him from a five-by-four grid.His own face was the twentieth located in the third row and the second column, and it somehow seemed a little more haggard than the others.It was an online meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous based somewhere in Central Massachusetts and was a remnant of the good old days of the COVID pandemic during which the whole country wore masks and secured themselves indoors while the orange shitgibbon living in the White House screamed about an election he falsely claimed was stolen from him and inspired a riot in the nation’s capital.Only a handful of these “Zoom meetings,” as they were called, remained now that the pandemic was over, and Jack was relieved to have found one of them.With himself and his family snowed in at the continental divide in a grand hotel that was closed for the winter,any chance to connect with the outside world that involved some live interaction with another living person was a welcome break from the monotony, as well as the dread that was filling up his being.

Jack smiled wanly and unmuted his microphone.“Sure,” he said.“I’m Jack and I’m an alcoholic.”There was a silent pause which, during an in-person meeting, would have been filled with the callback of ‘Hi Jack!’ from the other participants.Now they each only waved back from their little square on the screen.It was not comforting. 

“And greetings from the beautiful Overlook Hotel,” he continued.“Lovely place when it’s open, but I’m here as the caretaker this winter with my wife and sonThere’s about ten feet of snow on the ground which is keeping me from getting to a meeting in Sidewinder, so I’m really glad that the satellites up there still make it possible for me to check in.”Jack pointed upwards, and a few people nodded in agreement.A sour taste filled his mouth as he watched them do it.He suspected that most of the people who still relied on meetings like this were shut-ins by choice, not people like himself who were shut in because they had to be as part of the job he was doing.He also suspected that they didn’t have families with him, or children… children like Danny who had bizarre passing-out spells and imaginary friends whose appearance seemed to appear concurrent with them.

( _does the phrase ‘the shining’ mean anything to you?_ )

Dr. Edmonds’ left-field question at the end of his visit with them slashed through his mind, causing him to pause briefly.Then he swept it away. 

“Anyway,” he went on, “it’s been a little less than a year since my last drink, and part of that has really only been possible because they cleared the Colorado Lounge of all its booze before they shut the place down, so there’s nothing up here more dangerous than vanilla extract, which I think is hardly strong enough to do the job right, so it’s not worth it.”

He had hoped that the joke would elicit a few smiles or laughs from the people looking back at him, but none came.There wasn’t even an understanding nod this time.They were looking at him the way they looked at him the first few times he had been to a meeting in Sidewinder before the snow closed them into the hotel… like an idiot who didn’t know what he was talking about.He took his handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and wiped at his lips with it.A couple of eyebrows went up as he did so.They knew what he was doing and he knew it too.

“But anyway, as it says in the Big Book, the problem’s not in the bottle, but with me,” he said.This time the nods came and the judging eyebrows relaxed.Mentioning the Big Book or reciting from it somehow seemed to take the edge off the feeling of being unfairly assessed that he felt when he was in a meeting.“And I have to tell you, mine has been run ragged.I don’t know if it’s cabin fever setting in or what, but it’s just been really hard and I can’t figure out why.The job doesn’t require anything more mentally or emotionally taxing than checking the boiler, heating different parts of the hotel on a rotating basis, and make repairs when necessary, so I have a lot of free time on my hands.I’m supposed to be working on a play that I’m writing during that free time, but it’s just starting to be a grind.I don’t even want to look at it anymore.”

He paused again and ran his hands through his hair, the way Wendy did sometimes.Was he really about to go into the whole story about the last few days with these strangers?About finding the scrapbook that contained the Overlook’s colorful and sordid history, resplendent with its seductive tale of glamorous guests, some of whom were the most famous - and infamous - names in American history?About how fascinated he had been by the way the Overlook had changed hands several times in a cutthroat game of Monopoly with each transition preceded by violence of some kind? About how he had been both horrified and also strangely attracted to the story about the gruesome murder of Vito The Chopper and his bodyguards on the third floor outside the Presidential Suite? 

(t _hey took his balls along with them_ )

Or about how he had been having this awful recurring dream in which the masquerade ball thrown here by Horace Derwent at the end of World War II was merged with Poe’s _Masque of the Red Death_ , and that as people removed their masks he would see the rotting, decomposing faces behind them? 

( _UNMASK! UNMASK!_ )  
( _…and the Red Death held sway over all!_ )

And that even in his terror during the few moments after awakening from that dream, he would be seized with a compulsion to leap out of bed and dive back into the pile of moldy gas bills, desk ledgers, and newspaper articles in hope that somewhere in there would be the magic balm that would soothe the maddening itch of his brain or the missing pieces of the puzzle that would somehow bring into being a picture that would finally explain to him his attraction to this place with its sordid, bloody history? One that would maybe even explain Wendy’s lack of passion about or even interest in the hotel or his son’s unspoken but obvious fear of the place… both of which he found inexplicably insulting to him?

No, he wasn’t about to spill that chamber pot full of piss and shit on these strangers, even if they were drunks like him.

“So, I’ve just got a lot of free time and a mind that’s looking for something to occupy it,” he said at last.“And of course since I’m not finding it, I know that I’m in trouble.My mind has occasionally drifted to the thought of a drink, especially when I’m down in the basement looking through some of the hotel’s history, but I’m usually able to get through it with the Serenity Prayer and a moment of quiet.”

That was a lie, and he was sure even the people attending the meeting knew it.The Serenity Prayer hadn’t come to his mind once since the last time he had attended an AA meeting in Sidewinder six weeks earlier after they had taken Danny to see Dr. Edmonds.It hadn’t come to mind when he had decided to FaceTime that officious little prick Ullman and rattle his gilded cage by showing him the skeletons in the closet of his beloved hotel.It hadn’t come to mind as he watched that fat little fairy’s face turn purple with rage as he threatened to fire him.And it certainly hadn’t come to mind during another FaceTime call with Al Shockley, who had gotten him the job at the Overlook, during which Jack had preoccupied himself with the stately appearance of the old books on the shelves of Al’s mahogany-lined den rather than look at the man standing in front of them, shouting at him for making such a stupid mistake.Fucking Al, who had quit drinking without the help of these stupid AA meetings and had no idea what it was like to have to live off someone else’s charity.

Jack scanned the screen for the one seemingly friendly face among the other nineteen and decided to focus on it. It belonged to a woman named Lois who was joining this Zoom meeting from Berlin, Connecticut, and was on the ungenerous side of fifty.Though her green eyes were slightly magnified behind her glasses, her face was calm and inviting. Jack somehow found her expression soothing.She would do. 

“But the rest of the time, I’m just lost in thoughts about how I ended up here,” he admitted. “I was teaching prep school in Vermont before my alcoholism cost me my job — and I wasn’t even drinking when it happened.I was sober, but I’m one of those people they talk about in ‘The Doctor’s Opinion’ when they say something about restless, irritable, and discontent until he has a drink. Turned out I don’t do restless, irritable, and discontent in moderation either cause I beat up a student. And as it turns out, I still don’t do restless, irritable, and discontent in moderation becauseI ended up going off on the guy who got me this job and his persnickety hotel manager a couple of days ago and almost lost this job, too.Now I’m wavering between hating myself, hating them, and trying to figure out what I am going to do if I blow this too.So there’s a lot of fear going on.”

Lois nodded and Jack felt an invisible weight he hadn’t known he was carrying slip off his shoulders.He kept going.

“As I said, there’s no booze up here and the vanilla extract holds no appeal, so I’m not worried about getting drunk, but I’m just so upset all the time,” Jack said.“I’m doing what I can to spend time with my family and we do spend time together, but sometimes I get angry with my wife and son at times and don’t have a clue why.” He rubbed at his lips again and pressed on.“And on top of that, my son…”

( _you lost your temper_ )  
( _UNMASK! UNMASK!_ )  
( _i broke his arm turning him around to spank him_ )  
( _…and the Red Death held sway over all!_ )  
( _Damn little puppy! Damn little whelp! Give me my cane, you damn little pup! Give it to me!)_

The last thought had come out of nowhere and shocked him into a moment of silence.The voice attached to that thought had belonged to his late father, a towering, beefy hulk of a man with an angry pink face that glowed under his crewcut…A man who reeked of beer and industrial skin cleanser from the hospital where he worked as a male nurse…A man who always seemed to have his hospital whites untucked and looked to Jack like a great white ghost… A man who was hated by his older brothers and sister and was tolerated by his weak dishhrag of a wife because her Catholic upbringing said that she must… A man who settled an argument with his children with his fists on one day and then would come home from the hospital the next and sweep him into his large muscled hands and propel him deliriously upward several times crying ‘Elevator!Elevator!’… A man left lame by a car accident and carried a black cane with a gold head — a cane that he had used to beat his mother within an inch of her life one night at the dinner table.

( _WHUMP!WHUMP!WHUMP!_ )  
( _Now! Now by Christ! I guess you’ll take your medicine!)  
_ ( _WHUMP!WHUMP!_ )  
( _Goddam puppy!_ )   
( _WHUMP!_ )  
( _Whelp!_ )  
( _WHUMP!_ )  
( _Come on and take your medicine!_ )

For a moment, he was back there… a little boy clutching his sister Becky and crying while his brother Mike screamed into the phone for an ambulance and his oldest brother Brett wrestled the cane from his father and threatened to bash his father’s brains the fuck in with it while his father yelled

( _Damn little puppy! Damn little whelp! Give me my cane, you damn little pup!Give it to me!)_

at him to give it back.The horror of that moment had been augmented for Jack when he saw his mother slowly rising from the floor with her punched and bleeding face and saying the only thing Jack could ever remember her saying word for word

( _Who’s got the newspaper? Your daddy wants the funnies. Is it raining yet?_ )

before she fell face-down and lost consciousness.

Jack shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and realize the silence had spun out too long.With the cunning of a cornered animal, he whipped up some tears. And even though the tears were fake, the words that came with them were true to the best of his knowledge and also as much as he could convey without people thinking he was losing his mind. Lord knew he already thought he was losing his mind.His hallucination in the topiary

( _that was no hallucination those animals had moved and you fucking know it_ )

had only underlined that fact.He dare not mention it to anyone in here.He barely wanted to acknowledge that it had happened at all.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed,“but I’m just so worried about my son, Danny.He has no friends out here except his invisible playmate, Tony, who I’m beginning to think doesn’t like him anymore.Also, he sometimes has these fainting spells that are really scary to see.And on top of all that, a while ago he got himself stung by a bunch of wasps that were hiding out in a nest that I had given to him because I was sure it was empty…”

“Stop all that fucking sniveling right now!”

Jack stopped talking, his mouth hanging open in stunned silence.It was his father’s voice.No doubt about it.It was Mark Anthony Torrance’s voice. 

His eyes made a quick sweep of the field of faces in the grid in front of him.No one else had appeared to have heard it.They all were looking back as if nothing were amiss.A few heads, Lois’ among them, were once again nodding in agreement.On the right side of the window, a blue triangle appeared with “1/2” in white letters below it.It was an icon that appeared when there were more people in the virtual meeting room than could fit into one five-by-four grid of faces.By clicking on the blue triangle with your mouse, you could see who the twenty-first person was.Without even thinking about why he was doing it, Jack clicked on the blue triangle.The face of the person who had been chairing the online meeting disappeared.All the others shifted to the left one space, and a new one appeared in the lower right-hand corner. 

The face that occupied it was his father’s.The Great White Ghost that had dominated his life had somehow cheated death and was here in this virtual meeting, staring back at him with the others. 

“Daddy?” Jack whispered in horror.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said with disgust.There was an arc of light across the screen and then it stopped in the palm of his father’s hand.It was the gold knob of his cane gleaming viciously in the light and now bouncing in his father’s fat, muscled hand. 

Jack was strangled with fright “No,” he said in a voice that was barely above a pitiful squeak.“No, you can’t be… You’re not… You’ve been…”

“Shut the fuck up,” Mark snapped.The vein in the center of his forehead was standing out prominently, always a bad sign.“And stop blubbering about that little brat,” he added in a voice that could turn water to ice.“Right this minute that boy of yours is in where he shouldn't be. Trespassing.That’s what he’s doing. He’s a goddam little pup.Cane him for it, Jacky, cane him within an inch of his life.”

“Cane him,” said all the other meeting participants in unison, including Lois.

“Have a drink, Jacky my boy,” Mark Torrance went on, “and we’ll play the elevator game. Then I’ll go with you while you give him his medicine!”One by one, the faces of the other meeting attendants were being replaced by that of his father who’s voice was getting louder and louder, becoming something maddening, not human at all, something squealing and petulant and maddening… the true voice of the Great White Ghost. “I know you can do it, of course you can! _You must kill him!You have to kill him, Jacky, and her too!Because a real artist must suffer!Because each man kills the thing he loves!BECAUSE THEY’LL ALWAYS BE CONSPIRING AGAINST YOU, TRYING TO HOLD YOU BACK AND DRAG YOU DOWN!”_

Jack screamed in wretched terror and slammed the laptop shut. The sound of his father’s screams was cut off cleanly, as if with a knife.For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of his own breathing and the thud of his heartbeat in his ears.A thin layer of sweat had grown between him and his clothes.He closed his eyes and waited for his breathing to return to a normal pace and the pulse in his head to quiet down.When they had done so, he looked at his laptop, lying closed on the desk, inanimate.The Apple logo that normally glowed when it was open and he was using it was dark.He put his thumb where the groove was on the lower half of the clamshell  
  
( _God grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change courage to change the things i can and wisdom to know the difference_ )

and pushed up the top.He was holding his breath.

The Zoom meeting was gone.There was no sound.He exhaled slowly.All that was on the screen was the window for the Zoom application that permitted him to join or schedule another online meeting. He closed it, and now all he could see was and the wallpaper of his main screen. It was a photo of him, Danny, and Wendy smiling brightly into the camera — a photo from a happier time in their life before he had lost his job at Stovington.They loved him and he knew it.He didn’t deserve them but he had them all the same.They knew what this caretaker job meant and why it was important.They would never try to hold him back and drag him down.That was utter bullshit and where it really counted, he knew it too.

( _but the hedges_ ) 

Yes, there had been that whole experience.And no matter how hard Jack had tried to shake it off, he couldn’t.Only this time, it was not fear from the experience that unsettled him.It was the fear of what Wendy might do if she found out about it.She was already nervous that his temper was getting the best of him, and he had on more than one occasion caught her trying to take a whiff of his breath to see that he wasn’t drinking.She may not have known she was doing it… or did she?Surely if he told her about what he had seen in the topiary, she would decide that he had gone up and over the high side, grab Danny, and run for her life, snowfall be damned.

( _bitch)_

Jack caught the tail end of the thought and examined it for a moment.Then his gaze turned to his computer screen. Wendy was smiling back at him… a bright, sweet smile filled with gleaming white teeth and presided over by a pair of eyes that had charmed him from the first moment he had seen them.Whether or not she had known it, he had recognized her initial assessment of him when they were still in college as love at first sight.And it was true love.Yes, that love had begun to curdle as his drinking progressed, and it had rightfully vanished when he had broken Danny’s arm.But he had seen and felt her love again, more than once since they had gotten here.The mere fact that she had stayed on this long was proof of that fact.

A ping issued from the speaker of his computer.He looked down and saw a white 1 in a red circle in the upper left-hand corner of the Messages app in the dock.He guided the cursor over to the Messages app and tapped the trackpad twice.As the app popped open, Jack’s breath stopped in his throat and something in the pit of his stomach got too warm as he took in what he was seeing.

The top part of the message where the sender’s name or phone number would normally appear was an indecipherable jumbo of letters, numbers, and symbols that Jack didn’t recognize.Below them was this:

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

_Ping!_ went the Messenger app again.Another white 1 in a red circle appeared and below the initial line of text, the message was repeated: 

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

_Ping!_

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.  
  


 _Ping!_ _Ping!_ _Ping!_ _Ping!_

The computer began to issue forth a steady beat of pings and the white number in the red circle began to increase with them.Now it was a 5… now a 6… now a 7.Faster and faster it began to change.When the number reached the double digits, the red circle widened into a small oval.Again and again, the same message kept appearing:

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.  
  


_Pingpingpingpingpingpingpingpingpingpiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing_

Now it was no longer a solitary bell but a constant piercing tone that filled the room and obliterated all thought.The white number in the red oval got larger and larger and the red oval lengthened into a lozenge shape. A comma appeared in the white number and that solid high-pitched note began to feel like a spike in Jack’s ear.The pain it produced in his head was unbearable.Jack clamped his hands over his ears trying to blunt the sound, but it persisted.Over and over again the same message:

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.  
  


And just below it, his father’s voice screaming in drunken fury:

( _YOU MUST KILL HIM YOU HAVE TO KILL HIM JACKY AND HER TOO BECAUSE A REAL ARTIST MUST SUFFER BECAUSE EACH MAN KILLS THE THING HE LOVES BECAUSE THEY’LL ALWAYS BE CONSPIRING AGAINST YOU TRYING TO HOLD YOU BACK AND DRAG YOU DOWN RIGHT THIS MINUTE THAT BOY IS IN WHERE HE SHOULDN’T BE TRESPASSING THAT’S WHAT HE’S DOING HE’S A GODDAM LITTLE PUP CANE HIM FOR IT JACKY CANE HIM WITHIN AN INCH OF HIS LIFE HAVE A DRINK JACKY MY BOY AND THEN WE’LL PLAY THE ELEVATOR GAME THEN I’LL GO WITH YOU WHILE YOU GIVE HIM HIS MEDICINE I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT OF COURSE YOU CAN YOU MUST KILL HIM YOU HAVE TO KILL HIM JACKY AND HER TOO BECAUSE A REAL ARTIST MUST SUFFER BECA_ )

“ _No!_ ” he screamed back. “You’re _dead_ , you’re in your _grave,_ you’re not in me _at all!_ ” Because he had cut all the water out of him and it was not right that he should come back, creeping through this hotel two thousand miles from the New England town where his father had lived and died.

He raised the laptop up and brought it down, again and again, trying to kill the sound, kill the screaming, kill the Great White Ghost.It hit the corner of the desk one more time and then tumbled out of his grasp to the floor where it hit the ground with a thud.Jack began to stomp on it, cracking the screen, breaking the hinge that connected the screen to the keyboard, and dislodging keys.Soon the MackBook Air lay in pieces like the result of some crazy elevator game gone awry, making his father’s voice gone, leaving only his voice, Jack’s voice, Jacky’s voice, chanting in the cold reality of the office. 

“ _—dead, you’re dead, you’re dead!_ ”

And the startled sound of Wendy’s feet hitting the floor over his head, and Wendy’s startled, frightened voice:“Jack? _Jack!_ ”

He stood, blinking down at the shattered laptop.The play was gone, and with it had gone their main source of communication.Now there was only the snowmobile in the shed to link them to the outside world.The CB radio, once a staple piece of equipment in a situation like this, was collecting dust among the mountain of papers in the basement, another relic of the Overlook’s history. 

He put his hands over his eyes and clutched at his temples.He was getting a headache.


End file.
